I really like the first one, but it's generally regarded as the weakest of the three. It's built in the Aurora (Neverwinter Nights) engine, combat is timing-based (click the mouse three times with precise timing to do maximum damage), equipment management is minimalist (want a new sword? You're going to have to drop the one you've got and leave it behind), your moral decisions have relatively little impact on gameplay, and it's the one with the goofy-ass sex card collection mechanic. It's not very important in setting up the plot of the sequels.

That said, I think it's a great game, and I've played it through to completion twice. It's free; you should get it and play it.

(Though it appears that, for the moment, you can only get it if you already have an account at Ars Technica; their server was getting hammered with new registrations, so they've shut them down temporarily. If you miss it this time, just wait a few weeks; GOG puts it on sale for a buck or two pretty much all the time.)

According to Wikipedia they used vNES on their website; I wouldn't be surprised if they used the same thing on the plug-in console. I can't find a license for vNES offhand but I'm seeing a couple references saying it was open-source. Under most licenses, that means they'd be clear to sell it with proprietary ROMs, and even under the GPL I don't think they'd have to release the source if they didn't make any modifications to it.

Harder to tell on the Steam ones. The Zelda knockoff has a border around it that makes me suspect it's a port rather than emulated, whereas the Noah's Ark game looks like an emulator with a shitty filter over it (and stretched on top of that). I'm inclined to think Exodus is a port rather than an emulator (the graphics aren't stretched to fit the aspect ratio, and the start screen says "press SPACE" rather than Start or some other game controller button). Hard to tell on the last one; it looks stretched but not filtered.

I was just thinking, hey, SOMEBODY'S bound to have Shadow of Mordor on sale what with the sequel's impending release, and hey, Bundle Stars does. (Not sure why there are Windows logos everywhere and no penguins to be seen, because there's totally a Linux port, and this is a Steam code.)

GOG Summer Sale's on. Mostly the usual suspects, but plenty of good stuff in there.

Maybe it's time I re-bought Doom 1 & 2. I mean, yeah, I already bought them once, but at this point it would cost more to buy a floppy drive to get them off the original disks than it would to buy them again.